Moving To Center

We are constantly being pushed and pulled in different directions by the forces around us. The extreme agendas of the left and right dominate our political and social discourse and keep us tuned in to a drama of constant conflict. But there is another way of moving through life — by staying connected with the center of our being where Spirit lives and awaits our recognition and offers guidance through any difficulty.

Transcript

And I want to talk today about moving to center,

Moving to center.

Because in the time that we're in,

We're kind of bombarded by news from the far left and the far right and the weirder and the stranger that news is,

The more of it we get,

That sensationalism and that anxiety and that kind of,

Wow,

Did somebody really say that?

Yeah,

And we've got to hear it over and over again.

So,

There's a lot of that going on and for some reason,

We get this thing on our email that if we'll just send $7 by midnight tonight,

Everything's going to be okay.

So there's just a lot of that going on.

And so,

What I want to talk about is moving to center,

About finding our center in a spiritual place.

And I think that that's what we're about here on Sunday mornings.

And the thing of the left and the right,

Both politically and socially,

Is something that's always been going on.

It's just part of our nature.

It's been going on since the beginning.

We saw it at the forming of the country.

One of my greatest influences has been Ralph Waldo Emerson and been a great influence on our teaching here.

And we think of him as a spiritual leader,

But he talked some about politics in his time too.

He wasn't a real fan of politics,

But he knew he had to get involved.

He said,

It is impossible to extricate yourself from the questions in which your age is involved.

You can no more keep out of politics than you can keep out of the frost.

I love that.

He was dealing with the issue of slavery,

Moving towards the Civil War when people just could not get along and everyone was entrenched in their own opinions politically and socially.

Women were struggling for the right to vote.

He was in the middle of that.

And yet there was an urge to stay in his spiritual center,

And he did a lot of writing about that.

And I think that's what's important for us today.

We can't escape the issues of today,

And they're important.

By moving to center,

I don't mean moving to the middle of the road where we don't have opinions about things.

There are things we're passionate about,

Things that we care about deeply,

Things that are important to us,

And we need to be involved in those things.

What I'm talking about is living in our spiritual center,

In our God center,

Getting our information from there,

Knowing that our true source of information is the living spirit that's alive in us right now.

And I think if we're going to move to center,

What we have to do most of all is to seek God first,

To put God in first position in our lives.

You know,

I love teaching classes here,

Teaching our Science of Mind and Spirit classes.

I'm just finishing one up now.

It's called Beyond Limits,

Which is our introductory class.

And whenever I'm teaching this class,

The first week,

We always talk about this relationship we have with God.

What's that like?

What's your relationship with God like?

What do you think about this relationship?

After I'm talking for a few minutes,

I'll say,

How many of you in here,

When I'm just mentioning the word God,

Get kind of an uneasy feeling?

Quite a few hands always go up.

And I know what they mean.

There's some people in here that would raise their hands on that question.

Because a lot of us grew up with kind of an angry,

Judgmental,

Distant God,

Was living on a mountaintop someplace,

Always seemed to be a little bit ticked off,

Especially on Sunday mornings.

And so the idea of having a relationship with this dude was not foremost in our minds.

It's not something we were looking for.

So one of the things that's important to us is to kind of clarify what this relationship might be,

Who this God is.

One of the things it says in the Gospel of John is that God is love,

And those who dwell in love dwell with God.

And whatever concept we have of God,

Or whatever concept we may have learned when we were growing up,

It's bigger than that.

God is bigger than that,

Masculine and feminine,

And grounded in love,

And available to us.

Paramahansa Yogananda,

There he is again,

He said this about God,

First you must have a right concept of God,

A definite idea through which you can form a relationship with Him,

And then you must meditate and pray until that mental conception becomes changed into an actual perception.

Then you will know Him.

If you persist,

The Lord will come.

So let's be open to that.

Let's be open and seek God first.

Another thing I get to do here,

Which I really love,

Is to teach about the Bible.

And the more I dig into the Gospels,

The more I realize the incredible time that Jesus showed up on this planet.

And the political divisions and the social divisions that were alive in the world that He stepped into.

His tribe,

The Jewish tribe,

Was occupied by Rome.

Jerusalem,

Judea,

Israel,

All occupied by Rome.

And there was an uneasy tension between the Jewish people and their occupiers,

Naturally.

And there were people who wanted to rebel against the Romans,

And they wanted Jesus to lead them.

There were other people who wanted to maintain the status quo.

And there was tension between the far right and the far left.

There's a famous story in the Bible,

When some men come to Jesus and they ask Him a question.

Or should we be paying taxes to the Romans?

Should the Jews be paying taxes to the Romans?

And wouldn't that be a great question at a press conference?

Jerusalem Times,

Jesus,

I've got a question for you.

Should we,

You know.

And it was one of those questions where no matter what He answered,

He was going to be in trouble with somebody.

And we see a lot of those questions,

Don't we?

Where there's no easy answer.

And of course,

He came up with a great answer.

Hand me a coin.

Whose picture is on that coin?

Well,

That's Caesar's picture.

Well,

Then let's give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,

Give to God the things that are God's.

That's a pretty good answer.

And over the years,

It's been interpreted in many ways that maybe that meant,

Maybe that meant for followers of Jesus,

We don't have to pay taxes.

Maybe that's what He meant.

Or that we don't really participate in the government in that way if we're followers of Jesus.

I think what He meant was to participate in your community,

In your government,

Do the things that you're passionate about.

Move towards social change,

Move towards justice.

But keep God in the first position.

Your heart,

Your soul,

And your mind belong to God.

Never forget that.

So let's seek God first.

One of my favorite authors and ministers was a guy named Harry Emerson Fosdick,

He was a minister in New York City for many years at the Riverside Chapel.

He wrote a great book called The Guide to Understanding the Bible.

He talks about the evolution of thought in the Bible.

This is what he said about Jesus and the change that Jesus made in the world.

Jesus' God was revealed not so much in the words He used about Him,

But by the way He lived with Him.

I love that.

He transformed the people around Him as they watched Him live with God and seek God first.

So another thing I think that's important is for us to focus on the things that are important.

We have become,

Because of cell phones,

We are incredibly interruptible.

You can be interrupted at any time.

It's no wonder a lot of us have ADD.

What?

It's just we're constantly interruptible,

Available,

We're supposed to be available all the time,

And there's just a lot of anxiety because of that.

And how do we focus on the things that are important?

How do we know what's important?

Well I think that's the gift of having our minds.

Our minds are very powerful and they can keep us centered on the things that are important.

I believe that we teach that here.

Do we still teach that here?

We do,

We do.

All right.

It's Josh and Michelle back there keeping an eye on me.

And they're like the guys in the Muppets who sit up there,

You know what I mean?

Statler and Waldorf,

Yeah.

I know.

That's what they are.

So focusing on the things that are important,

That's a big part of being in center and moving to center.

A part of our curriculum here always is the work of Stephen Covey.

He wrote a book called First Things First,

Which I know many of us have read.

And he talked about the things that are urgent in our lives and the things that are important in our lives and knowing the difference.

And he put this kind of quadrant thing together of those four places.

And there's the things in quadrant one that are urgent and important.

Like if a fire is moving towards your house and you just have time to get your guitars and your baseball cards and get out of there.

That's urgent and important,

Right?

There's other things that are urgent but not important,

Like all those things that are buzzing on your phone from other people trying to get you to solve their problems.

Those have a sense of urgency,

But they're not necessarily important.

The news is incredibly urgent all the time,

24-7.

And it's just wearing us out.

But we have to decide what's important in our lives.

Then there are things that are neither urgent nor important,

Like video games and social media and all our other forms of distraction that we use.

Call that quadrant four,

The things that are neither urgent nor important.

But up there in quadrant two are things that are important but not urgent.

And we want to spend as much time in that quadrant as we can.

That's where meditation and exercise live.

They're not urgent,

But man,

Are they important.

When Stephen Covey was on tour promoting this book,

What he would do is he would get up on the stage and he'd have this table in front of him.

He'd have a gallon jar,

A glass jar up there,

Empty jar.

Down on the table,

He would have lots of items to go in the jar,

Some big rocks,

Some smaller rocks,

Some pebbles,

Some gravel,

Sand,

Pitcher of water.

He was going to try and get them all into this jar.

And as he kept talking,

He kept putting the things into the jar to kind of demonstrate.

And he'd put the big rocks in first,

Then he would put the smaller rocks in and they would kind of find their way down,

And then the gravel,

And then the sand,

And then the water.

And we'd get them all in there.

Everybody would cheer.

And the point of it was that if you don't put the first items as big rocks,

If you don't put them in first,

There's not going to be room for them later.

And there's a good way to illustrate the way that our life works.

If we don't put the most important things in our life first,

Our spiritual work,

Our family,

Our relationships,

The things that bring us joy,

The things that bring us fulfillment,

The things that we're passionate about,

If we don't put those first in our lives,

We're not going to get around to them,

And our lives are going to be filled with anxiety and tension from the world coming at us.

So I think knowing what's important in our lives and bringing that into the top is what's very important for us.

Get the big rocks into the jar.

Another thing that I think that's important about living in our center is staying open to spirit,

Staying open to what spirit has in mind for us.

You know,

A couple weeks ago,

Mark Nepo was here with Dr.

Roger.

How many of you came to see that?

It was just amazing,

Wasn't it?

Wasn't it a great night?

Mark Nepo said something that I will always take with me.

He said,

Our minds are an inlet,

Not a container.

Our minds are an inlet,

Not a container.

We need to remain open all the time to what spirit has in mind for us,

To keep ourselves centered so that we're available to spirit,

We're available to our intuition and our deeper wisdom.

Our minds are an inlet for that.

You know,

About a little over 30 years ago,

My buddy Dr.

Patty and I started a thing called Rainbow Day Camp here,

Being good Baptists and growing up with Vacation Bible School,

We decided that we would do that.

So it was basically founded on peanut butter and kickball,

And it's grown since then.

But one of the highlights every year of Rainbow Day Camp for the kids is to go into Dr.

Patty's teepee and learn how to jump to center.

And the kids get in there and she talks to them about getting their feet planted on the ground and their hands over their heart,

And no matter how crazy the day has been and no matter how wild it's been for them running around,

They can jump to center.

And we use that phrase during the week,

All right,

Everybody jump to center.

It's just affirming that there's a place in us that knows.

There's a place in us that is calm,

That is connected with the living spirit,

Right now,

Always.

We do that here every Sunday morning when we do Surely the Presence together.

You can feel it.

We can feel it in this room.

We come in.

There's all this going on.

People are meeting each other and seeing each other,

And it's so good to be back together again.

We sit in here and the chimes ring and we start.

We can just feel ourselves calming down and moving into center and affirming the presence of God.

We do that in day camp every morning.

We get in there.

There's over 100 kids in the room,

Teen leaders,

Adult leaders,

Presenters,

Helpers,

Teachers,

Parents.

And the room is just buzzing with activity and all the things that are going to be happening during the day.

And there's just so much joy and everything going on in the room and so many details going on.

And then either Tom or I will start playing in the beginning of Surely the Presence on the guitar.

And you can just feel the room gradually moving to silence.

Just a few moments.

The whole room is silent.

And then we're singing together.

And we're signing the song.

And then we're praying together and opening to the possibilities of the day what Spirit has in mind for us.

And I think moving to center,

Learning how to jump to center in our lives no matter what is going on,

All the things that are coming at us from different directions.

One of the greatest gifts that we have is our ability to jump to center.

You know,

I remember many years ago I was in one of our Sunday school rooms talking to a bunch of five-year-olds.

This is where I get most of my wisdom,

By the way.

A bunch of kids in the circle there.

And I just got done singing Surely the Presence with them.

And we were sitting around talking.

And I said,

Where do you think I could sing that song?

Where would be a good place for me to sing that?

This one five-year-old boy said,

You can sing that song anywhere.

That's the truth.

That's the truth.

So we carry that with us,

That sense of center and that ability to jump to center.

It's always with us.

No matter how rattled we might get out in the world,

No matter what information we're taking in,

We have the ability to jump to center.

So let's remember that.

Last thing I wanted to talk about today was if we're going to move to center,

If we're going to live there,

We need to embrace change.

And I know that's a tough one right now.

Because a lot of us are thinking,

Oh,

I've had enough change.

I'm filled with change,

Dude.

I want to go back to normal.

OK?

I want to go back to normal.

But it doesn't really work that way.

But we've been going through a lot of change in the last year,

Last year and a half.

You know,

It was exactly one year today when the election was finally certified.

And no matter how you feel about that,

Doesn't it seem like that was a long time ago?

And there are more changes heading our way politically,

Socially,

Personally.

We actually went through a year with no election.

Wow,

What a gift that was.

But there are more changes coming.

I know that.

And we need to be prepared for those things.

And we need to live in our center as we go through those things.

And as far as going back to normal,

Life doesn't really work that way.

We're moving forward.

And we want to be confident moving forward.

One of the traditions that we have at our house is whenever one of our sons comes to stay for a while,

We throw the coins of the I Ching together.

We throw our coins and we gather some wisdom from this book that's over 3,

000 years old.

It's been carried down through the generations as a way of gathering wisdom for so many different people.

And so our son Gabe was in town with his sweetheart,

Dania,

And it was the last night in town.

We all got around the table and we threw the coins.

And there's always so much wisdom that goes back and forth as we talk about our lives and the changes that we're in,

Each of us individually,

And the point of change that we're in.

And the book of changes really is based on the premise that life is always changing and allows us to bring our focus there.

So we all threw the changes.

We talked about them and I went last.

And what showed up for me was after completion,

The transition from the old to the new time is already accomplished.

After completion,

The transition from the old to the new time is already accomplished.

And that was the perfect throw for me,

The perfect throw,

Because I've been working here with the youth ministry for over 30 years,

A place where I put so much of my time,

My energy,

My heart,

My passion,

My love.

And that time is accomplished now.

It's completed.

And a little while ago when we had our trunk or treat out in the parking lot,

Which is really just an excuse for kids to get a big bag of candy,

But a lot of the kids came by with their parents and I just realized there were so many kids there that I'd baptized or kids that had been to Rainbow Day Camp,

Kids that I knew and kids that knew me.

There was kids that I'd seen grow up here that had their own kids and they introduced them to me.

It was such a good thing.

You know,

Here we are today celebrating kids here in the youth ministry.

And it's been such a good thing for me to have great people to hand this youth ministry off to.

Stacey Butters puts up with me at a time like this when we're doing a service like this and we still get together and talk about stuff,

But I've handed it off to her and to a great staff to keep it going.

And I know without any reservation that this stage will be filled with kids once again when this virus is over.

And we'll be celebrating with a huge group of kids.

But changes are an inevitable part of life.

No matter who we are,

What age we are,

We can embrace those changes and know that at the center of who we are,

God lives.

God is alive.

God is holding us through all the changes.

God is available to us if we turn in that direction,

If we come to ourselves.

So there's nothing to fear with change.

God is alive right now.

Not a God who was,

But a God who is.

I want to close with a quote from our founder,

Dr.

Ernest Holmes,

What he said about change.

"'We must learn to trust in the universe.

God is always God.

No matter what our emotional storm or what our objective situation may be,

There is always something in our inner being which has never been violated.

We may stumble,

But there is always that eternal voice forever whispering within our ear,

That thing which causes the eternal quest,

That thing which forever sings and sings.

'" That's the truth about all of us this morning.

Reviews

Such clarity in his message!